Keynes, John Neville ( born Aug. 31, 1852 , Salisbury, Wiltshire, Eng.—died Nov. 15, 1949 , Cambridge, Cambridgeshire ) British philosopher and economist who synthesized the two poles of economic thought , using both by incorporating inductive and deductive reasoning in into his methodology.

Keynes was educated at the universities Universities of London and Cambridge. After graduating from Cambridge (1875), he was a lecturer in moral science there (1884–1911) and then served as registrar of the university (1910–25). He was active in the foundation of also helped found a course of study known as the Economics Triposat Cambridge.

Keynes’s most important contributions to economics were as a logician and methodologist. His two chief works are in logic and methodology. His first major work, Studies and Exercises in Formal Logic (1884), which was popular for its clarity of expression and avoidance of mathematical symbolism, and his . Keynes’s classic work on economic methodology, The Scope and Method of Political Economy (1891). This work , categorized the various existing approaches to economics as either inductive and deductive, with Keynes adopting a syncretistic position. At a time when or deductive. With this book Keynes broke new ground by integrating the two approaches. At the time, the German-speaking world was engaged in the Methodenstreit (“battle of methods”) between the Austrian economic school led by Carl Menger, which advocated a deductive approach and stressed the importance of pure theory, and the followers of German economist Gustav von Schmoller, who insisted on the importance of inductive studies, advocated an inductive approach. Keynes, by contrast, insisted that both induction and deduction were requiredessential components of sound economic analysis. He felt that inductive reasoning provided the general premises upon which deduction had to be based and that deduction resulted in generalizations or laws which then had to be tested by inductive procedures.

Keynes was the father of the most influential economist of the 20th century, outlived his son, economist John Maynard Keynes, by three years.